To Obama: A Poetric Thought

Wishing on a star: Senator Barack Obama speaks at a town hall meeting in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

(photo by Getty images)

Here is a poem for President Elect Obama.

To Obama
(listen to poem as a podcast)

I don’t know who they think they are
carrying on about Change
when the reality is that change comes so fast to us
that it’s never visible until the aftermath
when the shadow of reflection is cast upon the landscape
and we understand how everything is different now
and the old order,
come and gone.

Yes, I am one of those,
the guilty many who is doing all of this carrying on,
with hopes in my heart that the course will be altered
by fresh ideas and fresh faces and the intellect
that guides you
even as I refuse to let my dreams shackle you
to my own expectations.

No, it is my children who speak through me
to you
and whose nightly whispers you must heed
in your head as you sit through briefings
and meetings and dinners with dignitaries
and consider the World from your seat up on top of the mountain.

Will others do the same?
Will they temper their expectations
and accede to reality?
Or will they claw at you with visions
of how it should be, how it could be,
how will it never be
even as you hold them off with a misplaced word
to soothe the lions outside the fence
whose only instinct is for blood.

Change us, perhaps, but don’t change yourself
and let us look back in ten years time
to finally understand that our path was forged amidst all of this chaos
in such a way that we never even knew
we were moving.

Here’s hoping for the best in the next four years ..

Peace (in the world),
Kevin

8 Comments
  1. snap snap snap snap
    That was wonderful. I listened to the podcast and fell into a coffee shop audience mind stream. I love the idea that we can work through the chaos, and emerge, still on the path we had intended, our vision and hope realized.

    • Thanks for asking, and for bringing my head back to those days. (January 2009)

      You changed us
      and in doing so
      you reminded us
      that change isn’t always
      what it’s cracked up to be

      what fissures exposed
      in this fabric
      are more than possibilities
      and hopefulness
      and wonder

      what fissures exposed
      in this fabric
      are also hatefulness
      and distrust
      and scorn

      whose needle
      will sow this world
      back together
      again?

      — Kevin, responding to the other poem, nine years later

  2. I choose to think that mothers are gathering their sewing boxes as we speak, just as Betsy Ross prepared our baby blanket. We are in good hands for this and the time is nigh.

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